There’s a straight line between the resilience of this soldier and the Filipino food that blesses Charlottesville.
In 1942, 23-year-old Mauro Biazon of the Philippines fought with the United States Armed Forces against Japan in the Battle of Bataan, a province of the Philippines. After the U.S. surrender, the Japanese marched Biazon and thousands of other prisoners fifty miles through sweltering tropical heat from the battlefield to POW camps. In what became known as the Bataan Death March, POWs suffered starvation, dehydration, exhaustion, and abuse, as Japanese soldiers made a sport of shooting, beating, and bayoneting POWs.
Many died. Biazon nearly did. A Japanese soldier stabbed him with a bayonet and left him for dead. But Biazon was not dead. He just lay still to make his captors believe he was. After they marched on, he crawled miles to safety.
For his service, Biazon received United States citizenship, despite never having been to the U.S. He also received a benefit covering five years of college expenses, which he used for the eldest of his ten children, Ellie. She dreamed of becoming an ophthalmologist, but the benefit wasn’t enough for a medical degree. So, Biazon urged her to study nursing instead, and use the money she made as a nurse to help pay for her siblings’ educations.
Ellie did as her father asked. “I loved my daddy so much,” Ellie said. “I knew how much he sacrificed for us.” So, she did the same.
After nursing school, Ellie moved to the U.S. in 1969 and worked at a Philadelphia hospital, and the next year, moved to Charlottesville for a job at UVa. From her paycheck, Ellie would keep enough for her food and survival, and send the rest to her family in the Philippines, for her siblings’ education. One went to education school. Another, architecture. One, aeronautical engineering. And another, nursing school.
Over decades, Ellie’s siblings gradually moved to the U.S. and joined her in Charlottesville, in pursuit of a better life. They all settled on Azalea Street, near the house that Ellie bought as a young nurse in 1974. In all, more than sixty family members have lived on Azalea Street, and every one of them is now an American citizen, thanks to Biazon’s military service. As years passed, the siblings built not just lives in Charlottesville, but a community. In 2002, they persuaded the City of Charlottesville to change Azalea Street’s name to avoid confusion with nearby Azalea Drive. The new name? Manila Street, after the Philippine capital.
Today, nearly a century after Biazon’s escape and 55 years after his daughter came to Charlottesville, the family shares with their community the food that binds them. In The Daily Progress (12/13/25), read how their Filipino heritage—sustained through sacrifice—nourishes Charlottesville at their restaurant Little Manila.